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A phone bot farm in action (files.catbox.moe)

submitted 4 months ago by Blaze@reddthat.com to c/interestingasfuck@lemm.ee

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[–] tiramichu@lemm.ee 67 points 4 months ago (2 children)

It's a nightmare that we live in a world where this bullshit even exists.

[–] perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Or that sci-fi predicted it (For The Win)

[–] psychonova@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 months ago

i actually just finished another re-read of For The Win, and yeah, that's gotta be more relevant now than ever before ._.

[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

Just another artifact of the fact that advertiser financed businesses is not robust. And the end of them is likely coming nearer.

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 66 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

They appear to be scrolling through a single social media feed. This operation is likely what those social media "boosting" services are doing, where they'll bring a ton of new traffic to your profile to try to goad the algorithm into sending real users your way.

[–] kionite231@lemmy.ca 25 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Is there a way to interact with GUI elements of Android using external device like a pc Or something?

[–] brian@lemmy.ca 37 points 4 months ago

There are a ton of things you can do with a keyboard natively on Android. I would imagine these use that plus a bit of software to emulate "real" movements, like the flicking down to scroll

[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 4 months ago

Sure with like teamviewer or similar app. I'd guess they're running the bot on a computer which is remote controlling those phones

[–] Aux@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago

Yes, you can control the phone programmatically if you unlock it and put it into dev mode.

[–] Vince@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago

If it's just a browser you can connect to chrome devtools via web socket and send commands

[–] Zier@fedia.io 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So all my followers/adoring fans are just 1 guy with a laptop? [crushed]

[–] DemBoSain@midwest.social 6 points 4 months ago

All of my Twitter followers are thot-bots. I don't even get the good ones that have pictures of cats in their bio. Just poorly photoshopped Kim Kardashian body swaps.

[–] CptEnder@lemmy.world 14 points 4 months ago

https://minsoftware.vn/

Looks like these guys, seeding bot farm. Actually has some good writeups of their methodology.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Surprised they use real phones for this, I would think VMs and VPNs would be the most scalable.

[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago

Since their usage is probably forbidden my the TOS of the platforms they use, and the platforms will try to detect this kind of usage and ban users, I would assume that the closer they appear like natural usage, the more effective they are.

Running these apps on a emulator and using VPNs etc. will probably be a red flag.

[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What are they automatically making the phones do though?

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 4 months ago

Scrolling though a feed trying to convince the algorithm to promote said feed to others.